New mom Jena Kunkel got the surprise of a lifetime Friday and it wasn’t the arrival of her new baby girl.
“He was like, ‘I wish I could be there’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, me too,” Jena said.
What she didn’t know was that her husband, U.S. Army Soldier Joseph Kunkel, was closer than she thought.
“I actually had told them that I needed to see the anesthesiologist again because the pain was just completely unbearable at that point.” Jena recalled.
That’s when nurses sent in a new ‘anesthesiologist;’ one Jena didn’t realize she already knew well.
After a few seconds, Jena realized who it was and three hours later, the Kunkel family welcomed a little girl, Ryleigh Mae.
“I fell in love with my baby as soon as I saw her,” Joseph said.
“She was just waiting extra long; I swear she knew that her daddy was coming,” Jena added.
But Joseph said the surprise almost didn’t happen.
“I had a ticket to go from Lawton to Dallas to Baltimore; and when I got to the Lawton Airport, they canceled my flight,” he said.
A fellow soldier at the Lawton Airport then offered to drive Joseph three hours so he could catch a flight out of Dallas. That flight was also delayed, but several hours of traveling, he finally made it to York Hospital.
“The most beautiful thing; I will remember this day for the rest of my life, not only obviously because it’s our first born, but just the miracle of how everything worked so perfectly,” Jena said.